Latest Study Says Downloading Decreases Sales
from the but-is-that-a-bad-thing? dept
Because studies seem to come out every few weeks saying one or the other thing, it’s hard to really put too much faith in any of the recent studies that say that file sharing increases or decreases music sales. The latest one says that decreases sales, but admits that people seem to “value” the music they buy more than the music they download. You could quibble with the methodology, which appears to rely on asking people what they would buy, rather than doing any kind of real experiment. So, for example, there’s no real way to tell from the study if people used file sharing to discover new music, which they would later buy. Instead, all the study suggests is that people would end up buying music they didn’t really like that much if they didn’t have file sharing. That doesn’t seem like a bad thing. What it suggests, in fact, is that people use file sharing to sample music — and if it’s no good, they won’t purchase it. That seems like a good thing. The recording industry should take that and realize that, if they produced more good music, they’d sell more music. Instead, they look at study results like this and think about how they can have their politician friends create more useless and expensive laws saying “file sharing is bad” while suing people for daring to listen to music.
Comments on “Latest Study Says Downloading Decreases Sales”
Good for who though ?
Everything you said was true. However, sampling is only good for the consumer, not the companies/artist. Because as you say, if it sucks, you don’t buy it. You win as the consumer but they lose a possible sale. I’m sure you, like myself, have a few CDs, LPS, 8-tracks, cassettes, etc in your collection that you ask yourself ‘WHY?’. Sampling would have saved you the purchase but cost the company the sale so what you portray as a positive is really only a positive for the consumer. As a consumer I’m all for it. As a capitialist, I see why the record companies are fighting so hard.
Second, and much harder to address, is the idea of producing ‘better music’. I’m so much for this but because my tastes are different from the next person’s, ‘better’ is harder to qualify.
And the studies should all pretty much show the same thing over time. Buying music on line should decrease as folks fill out their collections for this media switch (CD to Digital) and sharing will go back up as we start looking for better music.
Hmmmm. Sounds like better music would solve everyone’s problems.
Re: Good for who though ?
Everything you said was true. However, sampling is only good for the consumer, not the companies/artist. Because as you say, if it sucks, you don’t buy it. You win as the consumer but they lose a possible sale. I’m sure you, like myself, have a few CDs, LPS, 8-tracks, cassettes, etc in your collection that you ask yourself ‘WHY?’. Sampling would have saved you the purchase but cost the company the sale so what you portray as a positive is really only a positive for the consumer. As a consumer I’m all for it. As a capitialist, I see why the record companies are fighting so hard.
I disagree… I’d bet that sampling also increases sales in many ways. I can’t tell you the number of CDs that I own because I first heard it at a friend’s house or in a friend’s car… I don’t use any file sharing programs, but I’d imagine it functions in a similar way
Re: Re: Good for who though ?
Ok, maybe it’s just some word smithing. I do the sampling thing, itunes 30 second spots have convinced me to buy a number of CDs I would not have bought. Sharing implies I get the whole song and I’m nowhere near as likely to buy it once it’s in my possession. I probably would in some cases but it’s easy to forget the purchase part of the equation if you already have the whole tune.